So, following up the worldchanging article, I went to go look at the VALS classification survey that ecoAmerica used. To my "fit 6 billion people into a few squares" delight, they had an online version. SRIC-BI | VALS. At the end, after a separator, it asked a few demographic questions. As I always do, I skipped the income question but answered the gender and education ones. And then, as I always do, I checked for bizarreness.

As stovepiped as Fremont can be, I'm very proud of the community response to our most recent murder. The hijab-wearing mother of six kids, ages 2-13, was killed walking them to school in a neighborhood generally regarded as safe, and died from gunshot wounds holding the hand of her 3 year old so she wouldn't run into the street.

While people caution against jumping to the conclusion that this is a hate crime, in a sense that's irrelevant: I believe there's a sense that the muslim community is in need of a showing of solidarity (cf. what's going on in the UK) which has led to at least anxiety -- and often outright fear -- that this is a hate crime. The article calls for a day of solidarity with devout muslim women, who are easily targeted because of their dress.

To donate to a fund for the Ansari children, checks can be made to the
``Ansari Family'' at Washington Mutual, account No. 3091558830, and
Fremont Bank, account No. 55041477. For more information on ``Wear a
Hijab Day,'' contact Melanie Gadener at melanie@efsr.org.

It's the real thing. Throw a scarf over your head before you leave the house on Nov. 13.

So, this evening I discovered a University of Indiana study explaining that Jon Stewart covers as much ground as broadcast news, and this:

Denver, CO – SOLAR 2006. The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) announced today that it is one of nine organizations selected to take part in rock band Pearl Jam’s Carbon Portfolio Strategy. The Strategy is the newest component of Pearl Jam’s ongoing
efforts to promote renewable energy and carbon mitigation.

I've said before that the whole pre-emptive strike philosophy is like deciding a neighborhood has too many criminals so the best thing to do is to annihilate the whole neighborhood just to be on the safe side. No collateral damage is too much? That's absurd.

But I was reminded about the perils of being pre-emptively anti-dogmatic (got that?). If you've managed to miss the news, some little girls were killed in a violent death while at school. Truly hideous and appalling. However, I found the Amish community's response remarkable. Now, I would qualify "Amish" as dogmatic; but nevertheless they seem able to have a dogmatic belief in forgiveness, not a dogmatic belief in violent righteousness.

The Amish have also been reaching out to the family of the gunman.
Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, said an Amish neighbor
comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended
forgiveness to them.

"I hope they stay around here and they'll have a lot of friends and
a lot of support," Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and
woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the
attack, said of the Robertses.

Huntington, the authority on the Amish, predicted they will be very
supportive of the killer and his wife, "because judgment is in God's
hands: `Judge not, that ye be not judged."

I think it's not only moderates, but also fundamentalist Christians who owe it to themselves to think again, more carefully, about whether a punitive mentality is conducive to a good society.